Thursday, 6 December 2007

Unless you've been holidaying in outer Mongolia for the past two months, you can't fail to have missed the release of Radiohead's lastest album, In Rainbows. The reason is two fold. Firstly, the release of In Rainbows provided fan's with the longest gap between studio albums in the bands 15 year career. However, the main thrust of media publicity came from the unique nature in which the album was sold to consumers, namely that individuals, aside from a 45p transaction fee, were able to choose the price of the digital download. If you wanted to pay nothing, you payed nothing. your prerogative.

There has been much discussion about the average price payed for the album, with some going as high as £4.00 and others as low as £2.90; a mean of £3.45. If these figures are to be believed, then the album, economically speaking, has been a great success.

According to CNN/Billboard, the average price of a record is £11.61, of which: £4.26 goes to the retailer, £2.29 covers distribution and shipping, £1.47 is taken by promotion, £0.51 covers printing and pressing costs, £0.74 goes on record production, £0.58 on retailer discounts, £0.40 heads to the record label, and £1.36 goes to the artist.

I'm no industry expert, but as far as can tell, Radiohead will have only incurred one of the above overheads, specifically the production costs involved in the making of the record. As In Rainbows was sold via Radioheads website digitally, all the other cost were made redundant, meaning the actual cost of the record was a fraction of what consumers seemingly have payed for it.MP3: Radiohead - Videotape DOWNLOAD

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